Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 71: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

EARTHMAN, COME HOME to touch the western horizon; the whole cloud covered nearly 35° of the sky. The cloud would set at 5:12 a.m.; at 6:00 the near edge of the home galaxy would rise, but during the summer the sun rose earlier and would blot it out. All of which was quite all right with Mayor Amalfi. The fact that no sig- nificant amount of the home galaxy would begin to show in the night sky for months was one’of the reasons why he had chosen this planet to settle on. The situation confronting the city posed problems enough without its being complicated by an unsatisfiable homesickness. The city grounded, and the last re- sidual hum of the spindizzies stopped. From below there came a rapidly rising and more erratic hum of human ac- tivity, and the clank and roar of heavy equipment getting under way. The 69 geology team was losing no time, as usual, Amalfi, however, felt no disposition to go down at once. He remained on the balcony of City Hall looking at the thickly-set night sky. The star- density here in the Greater Magellanic was very high, even outside the clus- ters—at most the distances between stars were matters of light-months rather than light-years. Even should it prove impossible to move the city itself again—which was inevitable, considering that the Sixtieth Street spindizzy had just followed the Twen- ty-third Street machine into the junk- pit—it should be possible to set inter- stellar commerce going here by cargo- ship. The city’s remaining drivers, ripped out. and remounted ona one-per-hull basis, would provide the nucleus of quite a respectable little fleet. Comichooksnco im